The political pendulum (abortion edition)

From Civiqs:

A majority of Americans continue to support legal abortion in all or most cases. Civiqs has been conducting daily tracking polls on abortion since 2016, and has found consistent support for legal abortion throughout that time.

This support includes many voters who are personally against abortion. In a May 2023 Civiqs poll, 42% of Americans support the right to abortion both personally and as policy. Another 27% say they are personally against abortion but think it is a decision that the government should not be involved in. Just 26% of voters personally believe abortion is wrong and should be illegal.

The Supreme Court recently ruled that the abortion pill mifepristone should remain available. A large majority of Americans (62%) support this decision, with only 25% opposed and 12% unsure. Both women (63%) and men (61%) support the Supreme Court’s decision.

More broadly, three-quarters of Americans (73%) believe that mifepristone should be legal (54%) or legal under certain circumstances (19%) in their state. This includes almost all Democrats (93%) and a substantial majority of Independents (73%). Half of Republicans agree, with 51% saying the pill should be legal (17%) or legal under certain circumstances (34%).

P.S. Previous pendulum discussions are here (2021) and here (2022). We’ll have to see if Clarence Thomas is still in the news next November to remind voters who’s in control of that third branch of government. I think the pendulum thing is less of a big deal in presidential election years, though.

19 thoughts on “The political pendulum (abortion edition)

  1. A brief look at the data gave me a somewhat different impression. Among Democrats in the survey, 92% say abortion should be legal in most or all cases. Among Republicans, 75% believe it should be illegal in most or all cases. The partisan divide seems very wide and persistent. Since there are more declared Democrats than Republicans, the overall data shown in the figure leans towards the former group. But polarization is the primary impression I am left with.

  2. Isn’t the story here that even without the partisan polarization that 59% support “legal in most cases” or more ? Dividing the all and most groups only serves to showcase the position of the misogynists.

  3. I don’t understand how you connect this to a ‘two-party pendulum’, it looks like as denying the right to an abortion becomes a real policy not an abstract slogan, some American voters are becoming more favorable to abortion rights. I don’t see any reason to assume they have some abstract desire to balance two parties, I think they watch the TV and think “denying this right is hurting a lot of grown people.” Its often easier to support a policy as a Platonic ideal than as implemented by human beings.

    • Vagans:

      I never said the pendulum was the result of “some abstract desire to balance two parties.” The pendulum makes perfect sense: as you say, there’s a difference between opposing abortion in the abstract and being comfortable with an impending ban on abortion.

      • Andrew: You did not explain how you see this as a “pendulum” and the two posts you linked talked about swing voters who vote for whichever party controls fewer branches of government (insofar as I understand those posts). Your last sentence implies that “who controls that third branch of government” could move votes. Could you edit the OP to explain how you see this article as a pendulum?

        • Vagans:

          Indeed, this is a blog and not a textbook and I do not always explain everything from scratch. The “pendulum” refers to attitudes swinging from the left to the right. The idea is that attitudes swing in one direction, then elected officials and policy follow in that direction, going so far that some group of voters in the center feel that things have gone too far, then they support the other party, etc. The pendulum does not describe all aspects of politics but sometimes it is a useful analogy. Finally, the third branch of the federal government is the Supreme Court.

        • Andrew: do you see restrictions on abortion in the USA as similar to Prohibition, which was passed with a broad coalition which gradually broke up afterwards? They look to me like a policy which a small minority (the ~10% of Americans who believe abortion is always wrong) implemented without going through the slow steps of coalition building and parliamentary democracy. First they got compliant Supreme Court justices appointed, then they got state legislatures to pass laws which are not very popular with state residents. One problem with that is that sometimes you find that you don’t have the power to make your writ run.

          Some opponents of abortion rights in the USA feel that the Roe vs. Wade ruling about privacy was just such a dodge around the normal legislative process, and that is one reason why they fought so hard and long.

        • Andrew:
          But attitudes haven’t changed. I have used the GSS abortion items in teaching research methods for 25+ years. Sure there have been some changes but always most people favored legal abortions in at least some circumstances and the modal group is all circumstances. The big change I think it how central the issue is to people in the context of the list of issues. The people who think abortion is the most important issue are on a different side now.

  4. The story here is that “pro-choice” support is overwhelming in major cities but modest to slight minority everywhere else. It would be interesting to the data by congressional district. It may not be this badly skewed (this is the house map *before* the 2022 election when Republicans took control of the House) but chances are it’s not strongly different. And many of the districts near major cities are gerrymandered to “hide” conservative voters.

    It’s going to continue to be difficult to govern a country in which people living in 10% of the land area make rules that offend people in the remaining 90% of the land area, no matter what the population majority believes.

    • I suppose gerrymandering is a game played by both Democrats and Republicans. There’s a lot of content on FiveThirtyEight on that topic (https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/redistricting/). I guess we all agree that gerrymandering may give great power to small majorities, which kind of undermines that idea of “everybody’s vote matters.” I am sure nobody will disagree this is unhealthy for the political climate to thus have policy so far from the median political view. But, alas, I see no political way for the system to be fixed in the near future, and I do feel sorry for those who feel like their vote doesn’t matter because they happen to hold minority views.

      • Raphael:

        Unfortunately, in some states gerrymandering gives great power to the minority party! I think it’s become worse in recent decades, for several reasons discussed here.

        There are various ways the problem could be fixed, including the use of nonpartisan redistricting, requirements of bipartisan endorsement of redistricting plans, or court rulings tossing out extreme gerrymanders. I’m not sure how likely these will occur in the near future but they all seem like reasonable possibilities to me. And, again, the problem is not policies that overrule the minority; it’s also policies that overrule the majority.

        Beyond all this, people often have incoherent views. For example, the death penalty consistently polls well, but voters are not always happy with actual administration of the death penalty, which includes occasionally executing innocent people. People want low taxes, high spending, and a balanced budget, etc.

        • I definitely concur to your view that the minority may overrule the majority, and to the inconsistency of voter/ human thinking! And your suggestions to fix gerrymandering are suitable to overcome the issue. However, I do not believe many state legislatures will adopt them in the near future, because the short run political cost is very high. The ruling party would need to relinquish some power. But I believe the even more powerful incentive to cement the status quo comes from personal benefit of it to the incumbents. If an incumbent looses their seat, many of them literally don’t have a job the next day. Same for their staff. And if you cease to gerrymander, you are playing Russian roulette who of you and your friends looses their job. That must be terrifying!
          That’s what I meant with “no political way;” the tools are there, but few are willing to pick them up.
          Thanks by the way fo the link to your article!

      • “I suppose gerrymandering is a game played by both Democrats and Republicans.”

        True. However, since Democrats control the most populous states, they have the advantage at the moment. I love blue district in northern Arizona, that wraps around from Phoenix all way around the Grand Canyon, and the one in New Mexico that uses Santa Fe to control the entire northern portion of the state.

        But I’m not criticizing gerrymandering. By any sensible reading of the constitution, gerrymandering is the legal privilege of the party that controls the state legislature. It’s the claim that certain groups have special legal exceptions to the constitution that has been manufactured by the courts in the last 60yrs. My point, rather, is to show that by area the *vast majority of the country is represented by Republicans* – at least 80%; and if we were counting by square miles, it would be much higher, as the districts I pointed to above suggest. Not surprisingly, rural communities, which are overwhelmingly majority conservative, feel that they are the ones bearing the brunt of an undemocratic system.

        • Can you define “democratic” and show how granting more political power by land area more satisfies that principle?

        • Democratic: “Of or for the people in general; popular.”

          It depends entirely and exclusively on geographic boundaries. A government of Democrats in Washington DC is not “Of or for the people”, or “in general; popular.” in Montana, eastern Oregon, or Kansas.

        • Suppose ten million people occupied 90% of the land area, while ninety million people were in the other 10%. Would you say that a government where the ten million people get 90% of the vote and the ninety million get 10% is closer to being “of the people” and is more “popular” than reverse, where the ninety million people get 90% of the vote and the ten million get 10%?

        • The US system overrepresents voters from small, rural states in two ways: the Senate, and the low cap on the size of the House of Representatives (California has 67 times the population of Wyoming, but only 52 times the representatives; Texas has 46 times the population of Vermont but only 38 times the representatives). That cap was an administrative change made about 100 years ago I think.

        • …But the specific claims you made are incorrect. Arizona doesn’t have a blue district that wraps around the Grand Canyon. In fact, Arizona’s congressional delegation favors the GOP. (See: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-maps/arizona/). New Mexico’s maps include 2 out of 3 districts being competitive (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-maps/new-mexico/) despite Biden winning >+10%. (There is also pretty strong evidence the most recent cycle of redistricting helped the GOP even more.)

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